Forty-Niner

A lot of people talk about it. They’ll stumble around the campfire, swilling a nearly empty beer bottle and mumbling to mostly imagined adversaries, “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna match an old car body with a modern drivetrain and chassis, and nobody’s gonna stop me.” But by morning, the drive has usually faded along with the alcohol buzz.

Knoxville native Jon Haas, on the other hand, approached his project with a level head and saw it through to completion in six weeks. Get this: He mounted a 1949 Chevy coupe body onto a 1994 Chevy Caprice police car chassis. Lurking beneath the patinaed hood is a fuel-injected, 5.7-liter LT1 V8 engine. And along with this anachronism’s bagged suspension, the relic shell can reach speeds it never dreamed of back in the ’40s. And the best part? He has less than $2000 in it.